Archive for the ‘guest bloggers’ Category
Should You Take an Italian Cooking Class?
Today we’re welcoming Brian Jenkins with a guest post about a subject I know many of you are interested in — Italian cooking. Of course you can always check out my recipes, but if you’ve always wanted to perfect your Italian culinary skills but don’t have a nonna to turn to, this post is for you.
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Should You Take an Italian Cooking Class?
Are you wondering how to prepare authentic, tasty Italian dishes? Do you have a desire to do more when you make Italian food? Perhaps you have spent a long time yearning to make delicious Rollatini di Pollo served with a properly chilled bottle of Chardonnay.
Eggplants/Aubergine/Melanzane
There are plenty of restaurants and culinary schools offering Italian cooking courses. And no, you don’t have to be a little bit Italian to take the courses! You can have fun, improve your Italian cooking skills and enjoy some scrumptious food. Buon appetito!
Impress friends and family members by making a delicious Italian meal. No longer will your guests’ “that was delicious pasta” comment be dripping with insincerity! Well, let’s hope not.
A Google search such as “cooking courses Boston” (replace Boston with your city of residence) may just provide a few nearby restaurants that offer Italian one-day or longer cooking classes. Some of the classes teach students to make a five-course meal. Typically, students are part of a cooking team. Classes usually take two to three hours after which it’s time to enjoy a tasty Italian meal.
- The Italian Culinary Academy, located in New York City, offers amateur and professional programs through a variety of part-time amateur night classes. The courses include two or three sessions. Attend a high quality Italian culinary school during a New York City vacation. Sell your collection of antique ascots and dine at Babbo Ristorante.
- Cooking Vacations offers hands-on cooking classes and cultural tours in Italy’s 20 regions. Students are taught to prepare traditional Italian recipes by skilled chefs, local expert cooks, bread and pizza makers and Nonnas. The culinary holiday includes visits to markets and tours of vineyards and cultural landmarks.
- The International Kitchen offers a variety of Italian cooking vacations. The programs combine sightseeing and cooking classes taught by expert chefs. How about making scrumptious dishes from Umbrian recipes? Your friends will be inquisitive and hopefully impressed.
If you are one of those people who have a casual interest in cooking, taking a cooking class at a local restaurant may well be the best option. Here are some restaurants that offer cooking classes for a small sampling of cities across the US:
- Taranta (Boston, MA)
- Chef Andy (Orlando, FL)
- A Tavola (Chicago, IL)
- A Taste of Italy in Austin (Austin, TX)
- Andy Food (Scottsdale, AZ)
- Tante Marie’s Cooking School (San Francisco, CA)
- Rustico Cooking (New York City, NY)
Invest a little time and reap the rewards for the rest of your culinary life!
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Brian Jenkins writes on Cooking Schools and other topics for Braintrack.com.
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Have you ever taken a cooking class? Would you recommend it to others?
Excerpt from BAROLO by Matthew Gavin Frank
For all you Italy, wine, and book lovers out there, I’m pleased to present an excerpt from Matthew Gavin Frank‘s new book BAROLO, a memoir about Frank’s illegal work in the Piemontese Italian food and wine industry.
I’ve been hankering to get myself to Piemonte ever since “meeting” Diana of Creative Structures and the Baur B&B, and Frank’s book may be just what I need to hold myself over until I can get there.
The following piece originally appears, in slightly different form, in the food-and-wine memoir, BAROLO (The University of Nebraska Press, 2010), by Matthew Gavin Frank.
Coming to Temperature
I run my hand over my hair, spitting rain as cracked carbonation, and make for the indoors. The indoors takes the form of Alba, Italy’s Caffé Calissano, its cream awnings and shrub-lined exterior nearly kissing the orange stones of the Duomo.
Soon, I am drying off at a mother-of-pearl cafe table, my snifter of rosolio reflecting its oval pinkness in the white-tiled ceiling, as if assuring itself of its own existence before I pour it down my throat. This liqueur, which I’ve found only in Italy’s Piedmont, wears its rose-oil roots proudly in both smell and taste.
I sip and, petal-tongued, watch two raindrops race down Calissano’s window. I bet on the one on the right. It has a fatter bottom. It wins. Behind the window-rain, a helmetless boy passes on a rickety moped, disappears around the Duomo’s hip. Then, an elderly woman in a red plastic kerchief limps past grasping an armful of rolled bathmats to her chest.
If Alba is a body, I can’t tell if I’m the artificial heart or a virus. It exists around me, with me, despite me. It includes a young waitress, twentysomething, curly brown hair, green butterfly barrettes, who sets a small white plate of meat and mushrooms in front of me. She has a full face and short fingers. I didn’t order this.
“Um,” I say, “Io no…uh…”
“You are American, yes?” she says in a voice steeped as if in rosolio.
“I wear it like an overcoat, huh?”
“Aah,” she says, dismissing my ridiculousness, this is salami with the, uh, truffle, and the porcini in the, uh, vinegar.”
“Truffled salami?” I say on an inhale, my words sputtering as if spoken through a floor fan on high.
“Yes, this here,” she says, the face of her left pointer hovering dove-wise over the plate.
“And these…” I say, sniffing the dome smell of delicacy eight inches above the table, “Pickled porcinis?”
“Yes. Uh, you can not have a drink and, uh, not have something to eat. This is a rule.”
“Really? Just here, or in all of Italy?”
“Oh, everywhere.”
“Well, these are the best bar snacks I’ve ever seen,” I say, “This is a good law.”
She laughs, I think, because she feels she should.
“Mille grazie,” I say.
“Prego,” she says and returns to the masses.
Northern Italy is a region of wine and chandeliers and I sit as if in a crib, beneath yet another dangling mobile of crystal, shedding a gauzy orange light. I imagine that Piemontese writers Beppe Fenoglio and Cesare Pavese often sat beneath Calissano’s chandeliers with other local artists, eating, drinking, forging World War II’s partisan movement before playing bocce ball in the piazza.
Now, the Cinzano mirrors reflect the mostly businesses-suited patrons and waitstaff, clad in tuxedo shirts, loose bowties, black pants and black aprons.
The bar, stretching the length of the north wall, is patrolled by a young blond man, forever pacing its expanse, playing guard to the thousands of light-spitting bottles, filled with elixirs of red, white, clear, green, rose, yellow. The ceiling’s thick white tile is carved with oak leaves and wine grapes, fish flanks, and the occasional seraph. Calissano indeed seems a museum-turned-cafe and the staff roves among its tables so cleanly as if curators, no, sculptures come to life. Their hands and feet trace the nooks and bottles of their region.
I know, mouth now greased with truffle salami, cheeks now aglow with a post-porcini sting, that this is going to be my place in Alba. For the first time since arriving in Italy nearly a month ago, I’m infected with a sense of home. Uncommonly warm, I raise my snifter to an especially chubby ceiling angel, swear I see it wink, and swallow the thick last. At the bar, the young blond man rolls a raw porcini mushroom to the center of a wooden cutting board and hacks it in half with a meat cleaver. Even split, its stem is as thick as an arm.
Interested in more? Check out BAROLO for yourself!
E-Book Giveaway & Guest Post by Author Elisa Lorello
As part of the WOW blog tour, Elisa Lorello stops by Bleeding Espresso today to talk about something that has within the past few months become near and dear to my heart: e-books!
Since I treated myself to an iPod Touch two months ago, I’ve become a proud e-book convert after *swearing* I would never get used to the feel of a gadget in my hand instead of all those gorgeous pages. Of course I still love paper books, but getting used to e-books was *much* easier than I had imagined–and talk about instant gratification. I can pick out a book and have it literally in my hands in SECONDS.
Elisa is the author of Faking It and Ordinary World, and has offered up some free e-copies for lucky BE readers. Just leave a comment on this post by midnight on Sunday, February 28 (Italy time), and you’re eligible. You can get extra entries by tweeting or posting about the contest on your blog and/or Facebook (four possible entries total). Be sure to let me know about your extra entries via e-mail, Twitter, or FB.
Now, here’s Elisa!
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E-books Are My Friend
E-books and e-readers have been the target of some doomsday scenarios. “Watch out, they’ll destroy the publishing industry as we know it.” “Bookstores will be no more.” And while it’s true that the e-reader (namely, the Amazon Kindle) has rattled booksellers, I’m not ready to paint it as the Big Bad Wolf just yet.
Maybe because e-publishing has been good to me. Last month, my novels Faking It and Ordinary World hit the Kindle Store Bestseller list. Faking It even cracked the Top 10! The Kindle Store was able to provide me with the mass distribution that chain brick-and-mortar stores typically refuse an independent author. That, in turn, provided me with a readership and recognition.
But that doesn’t diminish my love for the tactile book, or bookstores. Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC, for example, is one of my favorite places to be and one of the first places I show off to my out-of-town visitors. Moreover, if I’m not at a coffeeshop to write, then I’ve snagged a comfy chair so I can read a book. And my home is cluttered with books on shelves, nightstands, coffeetables, you name it. It’s a comforting feeling to be surrounded by books.
So who said you had to love either one or the other? Since when did a pleasurable reading experience become an ultimatum, warranting the kind of loyalty you’d show for your favorite sports team? My bookworm friends who own e-readers say they haven’t stopped buying (or reading) tactile books. The e-reader is a tool of convenience, great for travel, for example.
I see no difference between the e-book as one more reading experience option just as audiobooks are an option. In fact, I often listen to an audiobook during my daily commute or road trips. People download audiobooks on their MP3 players as well.
I think e-books and print books can peacefully co-exist, and I hope they do. I even think my protagonist, a writing professor and published author, would own an e-reader and be spotted in Harvard Square, a latte in tow, reading her husband’s favorite books. You could count on it.
Ordinary World is currently available in print and e-book at Lulu.com, and in e-book at Amazon Kindle Store.
About the author:
Elisa Lorello was born and raised on Long Island, New York. In 1995, she moved to southeastern Massachusetts, where she attended University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth for both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Her career in rhetoric and composition studies began in 2000, and since then she has been teaching first-year writing at the university level. Currently, Elisa lives and teaches in North Carolina and is co-writing her third novel. She is happily single.
To learn more about Elisa and her other writing projects, please visit her blog I’ll Have What She’s Having: The Official Blog of Elisa Lorello, or her official webpage at ElisaLorello.com. You can also follow Elisa on Twitter @elisalorello.
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For more information on e-books in general, check out these great articles written by Sara (of Ms Adventures in Italy fame) at her tech blog, When I Have Time.
Remember to comment for your chance to win some e-books!
Tina Tangos: On Being Authentic
Please welcome the lovely Tina of Tina Tangos for her thoughts on being authentic:
This is my fourth time being an “expat,” and my second time living in Italy. My first time living abroad, I was an au pair in Switzerland. I was 24 at the time, and I did it not only because I had always wanted to live abroad and wanted a different experience, but I also did it because I envisioned myself at dinner parties as a “grown-up” later in life, smugly saying, “When I lived in Europe…”
During my time in Switzerland, I had the chance to visit Italy several times. I fell in love with the streets, the architecture, the food. What fascinated me the most was the way people dressed and carried themselves when they walked, and the fact that their daily lives took place on this very soil. I wanted to live in Italy and I wanted to be one of those people.
Upon my return to the United States, I wore interesting scarves and pointy-toed high-heeled shoes and never left the house without my sunglasses. I would play Italian pop music on my Discman (yes, those were the pre-iPod days) and strut down the street as though I were in Rome and not Seattle.
Finally, in 2006, I got a student visa and went off to Perugia. On one hand, I flourished in a lot of ways and my Italian went through the roof. I felt free and whole. On the other hand, I was so impatient to mold the experience into how I had fantasized it would be, that I made a bit of a fool of myself, and it even affected some personal relationships.
Due to a matter of the heart, I ran away to Argentina. Living in Buenos Aires is what finally did it. It’s a tough, huge city where people have their own problems to worry about and aren’t concerned with you. I learned a lot about just doing what I needed to do, and I fell into Argentina’s daily life.
That’s when my Italian citizenship was finally processed. It’s also when my life fell apart in Argentina. My heart broke. Everything broke (even my bedroom door – it just fell off!) It’s also when a relative offered to buy me a one-way ticket to Rome. It seemed like all the signs were pointing me back to Italy. So, I went with the current, and here I am, in Perugia again.
I’ve been here almost two months, as an Italian. I realized the other day that it’s already the best and most authentic living-abroad experience I’ve had yet. And not just for the obvious reason of being able to legally stay here forever (which does help).
Why then? Because I didn’t force it to happen – it happened for me when I stopped swimming upstream. Not only that, after all that living, and after my Argentinean experience, I simply couldn’t care less about fitting in. I am who I am, and I’m proud of my experiences. My Italian has changed – I have developed a strange accent, I accidentally say Spanish words, and I forget to use “lei” instead of “tu” in appropriate situations – and people still embrace me.
It’s great to assimilate into a culture, and I highly recommend that you do – but I’ve learned that it’s also important to just be who you are, even if it isn’t the “norm” in your adopted country. The more authentic you are, the more your new home will embrace you.
Tina Ferrari is a translator, tango dancer and part-time writer based in Perugia, Italy. She writes at AffordableCallingCards.net, where you can buy affordable calling cards to Italy, as well as on her own blog, Tina Tangos. Comments are always welcome!
How to Launch a Debut Novel in the US from Abroad
Oh don’t I *wish* I was the author of this post and writing from experience? Someday!
As it were, you’re about to read the outstanding advice from Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, author of Thirsty and an American who has been living in Shanghai, China since April 2006. This post is part of the WOW Blog Tour, but, to be clear, I’ve received nothing in exchange for giving Kristin some time here. I just like to show new authors who happen to be from Pennsylvania and live abroad (ahem) some extra love sometimes.
More on Kristin:
Aside from being a debut author, Kristin is also a voracious reader, a happy mom, an engaging teacher who believes in “telling the best story you can…believing in your writing…and working your arse off,” a fierce advocate for the end of domestic violence, and a writer who spends as much time as possible in writerhead.
To find out more, visit ThirstytheNovel.com or Kristin’s blog at KristinBairOKeeffeBlog.com.
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How to Launch a Debut Novel in the U.S. from Abroad
When I signed a publishing contract with Swallow Press in 2008, I (like most first-time authors) was over-the-top excited. I yelped…did a jig…and wore a sh*t-eatin’ grin for weeks. At some point (between jigs) I realized, “Holy schmoly! My debut novel is going to be published in the United States while I am living in China.”
This sobered me up real quick (temporarily, at least). Anyone who has published a novel knows how hard it is to get their book into readers’ hands if they are actually living IN the United States and are able to communicate easily with bookstores, publicists, editors, and most importantly, potential readers. How the heck was I going to do it from the other side of the world?
Good question.
First, let’s look at my challenges:
GEOGRAPHY: Now, pull out that globe you used in high school geography class. That’s me in Shanghai, over there on the east coast of China. I’m waving! “Hello! Ni hao! Ni hao!”
And over there…yep, spin that globe…all the way on the other side of the world in the United States…that’s where my debut novel Thirsty was published on October 1, 2009.
TRAVEL: To get from Shanghai to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (where Thirsty takes place), I have to take a 13.5-hour flight from Shanghai to Newark. Then a 3.5-hour flight from Newark to Pittsburgh. That’s 17 hours in the air, PLUS an endless number of hours spent taxi-ing on runways and eating awful food in various airports. That doesn’t even count the time spent getting to and from airports. Total travel time? With no glitches, at least 24 hours. (Tired yet?)
CHILDREN: I have a 21-month-old daughter who goes everywhere with me. She is energetic, chatty, stubborn, hilarious, prone to kicking the seat in front of her on an airplane, and at the age when all she wants to is RUN. Enough said.
TIME ZONES: Right now (as I write) it is 6:35 a.m. on Friday, November 13 in Shanghai. At this same moment, it is 7:35 p.m. on Thursday, November 12 in New York City. (Yes, it’s the day before. Weird, huh?) We are 13 hours ahead of the east coast.
INTERNET ACCESS: Because I live in a country that does not allow free access to the Internet, I am blocked from all the sites I need in order to interact with potential readers, including Facebook, Twitter, my own blog, YouTube, and many other writer-related sites. (Gggrrr…grumble.)
Hhhmmm. That’s a pretty comprehensive list of the challenges I faced. Here’s how I managed them:
STAY AWAKE! In the months leading up to the launch of Thirsty, I had to set up readings and book signings in the United States. To do this, I had to talk to events coordinators and bookstore managers from Shanghai on U.S. time. That means I was calling them at oh, say, 11:00 AM their time, which was (while Daylight Savings Time was still in place) 11:00 PM my time. Inevitably three out of four would say, “Oh, I’m interested, but can you call me at 2:00?” Yes, that meant 2:00 a.m. my time. (And I did. How did I stay alert? By hopping up and down and chomping into a lemon slice just before making each call.)
CLOSE THE GAP: Early on I decided that the only way to properly launch my debut novel was to be in the United States at the time of publication. So despite the cost, the debilitating jetlag, and the time spent, I (along with my husband and daughter) flew to the U.S. in late September.* My daughter and I stayed for about six weeks; my husband flew back to China after two weeks.
SAY YES! While in the U.S., I did as many events as possible. I attended a convention of independent booksellers. I did readings, book signings, and radio interviews. I even spent two days at my high school alma mater (shout out to Bethel Park High School!) chatting with the creative writing students about writing, publishing, life in China, and other cool stuff. My motto? If someone offers an opportunity, say yes.
HELP? If you can, hire a publicist. I did, and it gave me a voice in the U.S. I wouldn’t have had otherwise. This can be expensive, but it’s worth it.
SHARE THE CULTURE: When I hosted an online giveaway of cool bookmarkers created by a Shanghai artist, I got loads of visitors to my blog and to the Thirsty website. It was a great way to share Thirsty and a bit of China.
“HI! I’M WWW._________” Have you heard? These days an author needs a strong Internet presence no matter where she lives, but because I live so far from my target readership, it’s even more important for me. By using a VPN (Virtual Private Network), I’m able to access almost all sites from which I am blocked in China. (Of course not all VPNs work here…I’ve been through a number of them.) Check it out:
BLOG At “My Beautiful, Far-Flung Life,” I write about Thirsty, writing, my path to publishing, motherhood, wacky things in China, cool things in China, and more.
THIRSTY WEBSITE: I found a terrific website designer in the U.S. and together we designed a pretty cool site. (TIP: Writing copy—good copy—for a website takes time. On each page, you are telling a story—about you, your book, etc. Give yourself loads of time to write before launching the site.)
TWEET, TWEET: Via Twitter @kbairokeeffe I’ve connected with lots of readers and writers. I’ve made friends, hosted giveaways of Thirsty, and built up a fun community.
VIDEOS: Guess what? People love to watch stuff. Luckily I love to create stuff. Thus far I’ve done a video interview, created a book trailer, and said yes when the books editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked to do a webcast interview with me.
BEST FRIENDS FOREVER: Yep, I’m on Facebook, too. (Are you catching on to the theme here? Connect, connect, connect.)
Whew. I’ll stop there. Yes, there are lots more ways to get your novel noticed (Good Reads, Jacketflap, blog tours, etc.), but you get the picture. My final bit of advice to writers launching books from overseas? Do the celebratory jig, get ready for a hell of lot of wonderful work, and keep the lemons close.
Now…off to recover from jetlag.
*I’d like to offer a formal apology to the man who sat in front of my daughter on the flight from Shanghai to Newark on September 26. I realize that she kicked the back of your seat at least 2,858,367 times over the course of the 13.5-hour flight. Good karma coming to you for only scowling, not yelling or throwing your shoes at us.
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Thanks Kristin, and best of luck!
If you have any questions or comments for Kristin, please leave them here!
Michelle Fabio is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer living in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy and savoring simplicity one sip at a time.
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